Sex Education Curricula Of The 1940s/1950's

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In this chapter, Freeman shifts the focus from the physiology of sex education and instead highlights how sex education curricula of the 1940s/1950s began to include the mental and psychological aspects of sexual development. Because of this, sex education introduced courses designed to discuss boy-girl relationships and the, often contradictory, messages perpetuated to young girls. During the mid-twentieth century, both feminists and sex educators agreed that girls are not inherently feminine, but rather it is a gender performance, which is earned. Because of this, sex education often depicted culturally specific and acceptable forms of femininity. This is a key concept that is applied to The Story of Menstruation and the fairytale-esque